On the Calculation of Volume, Book I

by Solvej Balle

They had an air of peace about them, Marie and Philip, which reminded me of the time, five years ago, when I first met Thomas. The sudden feeling of sharing something inexplicable, a sense of wonder at the existence of the other—the one person who makes everything simple—a feeling of being calmed down and thrown into turmoil at one and the same time. Philip and Marie had clearly decided to spend the rest of their lives together, it was as simple as that, so what could they do but see what the future would bring. Seen in that light, my visit was a perfectly normal occurrence, I was an ingredient in their life together, a colleague of sorts and a friend, married to one of Philip’s friends from his early teens. I was not in the way, I was neither a help nor a hindrance, neither an opponent nor a supporter, neither a buyer nor a seller; I was simply a fact in their lives.

It seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurrences and improbable coincidences.

The unthinkable is something we carry with us always. It has already happened: we are improbable, we have emerged from a cloud of unbelievable coincidences.